I think we can all agree that God doesn’t do the ordinary. He operates outside of the natural realm, and the story of Christmas is the representation of just that. God chooses regular people to carry out his divine plan.
Mary and Joseph were just your average couple; recently engaged and excited to get married. Through the ordinary tasks of wedding preparation, God chose to wreck their plans for something much greater. I can just imagine Mary “confused and disturbed” as the angel Gabriel began to reveal God’s perfect plan to her: through her, a virgin, God would birth his Son and our Savior, Jesus. In the natural, Mary needed clarity, asking how could this be? As Gabriel explained that the power of the Holy Spirit would overshadow her, Mary went on to say, “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.”

Mary’s response has challenged me to be more aware of how I react when God chooses to wreck my plans. How do you respond when God reveals something to you? Do you question it in disbelief and struggle to make your plans prevail? Or do you surrender your plans saying, “I am the Lord’s servant”?

God chooses those whom he can trust; people whose lives are submitted to him and him alone. When you walk out his plan, it touches the lives of others. This miracle didn’t just have an impact on Mary’s faith, but it affected her relative Elizabeth’s faith as well. So much so, that during Mary’s visit with her, Elizabeth said, “Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her.”

Your faith will cause a ripple effect, and it will impact the lives around you. Are you going around speaking the miracles of Jesus, or are you proclaiming bad news? Your words have the power to bring people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

There is nothing Mary could have done in the natural for this miracle to transpire. For it could only be done through the mighty power of the Holy Spirit.

Not by our might, but by His! We don’t have to fight to make things happen. We just have to yield ourselves to His plan, even if that means forsaking our own.